


The Mechanisms of Memory

by tsukinobara



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Memory Loss, Steampunkish, Train Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 18:28:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21462556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinobara/pseuds/tsukinobara
Summary: Jared tends bar in a nowhere railroad town and has no memories older than a year.  When strange men try to kill him he's rescued by a man he recognizes but doesn't know, a man who says his name is Jensen and claims they used to know each other.  Jared leaves town with him, full of questions – who is Jensen?  Why did he risk his life to save Jared's?  Will Jared ever recover his memories?  And most importantly, why do people want to kill him?
Relationships: Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Comments: 21
Kudos: 102
Collections: J2 Reverse Bang





	The Mechanisms of Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Mechanisms Of Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/535456) by merakieros. 

> Written for J2 Reversebang. Warnings for memory loss and a total lack of scientific understanding of same.
> 
> Quickie thanks!  
merakieros for her [inspiring prompt and hot-ass art](https://merakieross.livejournal.com/15714.html) (it is so good it made me squee in public)  
dear-tiger for the beta-reading and title suggestions  
the helpful folks on the Nanowrimo forums for trying to find a slightly more steampunky term for a motorcycle

Padua, Wyoming, is a railroad town like many others strung along the iron routes crossing the American continent, recently-built towns facilitating commerce and personal travel and the relentless desire of Americans to push west, to drive themselves into every possible corner of the land they have claimed for their own. It supports a good hotel, a boarding house, shops, saloons, a doctor for people and a doctor for horses, a social hall, even a reasonably high-class brothel. And it supports a young man named Jared, a man of no known hometown, no known criminal record, and no known friends or family.

Wyoming might feel like the ends of the earth to him, if he had anything to compare it to. He has been here a year but he only knows that year – he has no memory of his life before, nor does anyone else. Where did he come from? Why did he stop in Padua? Was he running from something, or running towards? Even he cannot say.

He knows he likes the townspeople, and the townspeople like him. He tends bar at the Silver Horse Saloon, a watering hole run by a woman called Genevieve, who hired him for his friendly smile, his broad shoulders, and his uncanny way with machinery. She trusts him enough to give him a room upstairs, down the hall from her own quarters. They enjoy each other's company, but he has never so much as tried to kiss her.

Jared has no sweetheart, at least not among the good people of Padua, although on a few occasions he has visited the Birdcage, the local brothel, for some intimate human company. His past lies behind a closed door he cannot open, and for all he knows, there is someone behind that door, someone he loved who yet misses him. He may never remember who that person is, if they do indeed exist. He may never remember anything, and because there is no way for him to reconstruct his past he tries not to think about the fact that he does not have one, although from time to time he lets himself wonder – where is he from? Who was he before? What did he do? Who did he know? But thinking on it is a useless exercise, and so he turns the workings of his brain to his various attempts to modernize the hotel's carriage, to invent steam-powered kitchen appliances, to rig up a winch for the day when the train brings crates that must be lifted out the top of the warehouse cars.

By and large, he is content. There is a place for him in the world, whether or not it is a place he would have chosen, had he known he had a choice. He tends bar for Genevieve, runs her errands, concentrates on the work in his hands while his brain tracks off in another direction, chasing a mechanical problem.

Despite the railroad that runs through Padua, there is not a lot of casual traffic. No one visits the place for vacation. And so Jared is surprised to come out of the butcher's one day and discover a motorized bicycle in front of the post office, surprised and unprepared by the recognition that flares behind his eyes.

Because he knows that machine, knows the gears and pneumatic pistons, the headlamp and the steam tank, the spark and the pumps that bring the engine to life. He knows each brass fitting, each sturdy spoke in each wheel, the handy holster for an airgun. In his sketches – and he remembers sketching it out, pencil lines sure and coloring amateurish – it was a brilliant emerald green, but the motorized bicycle parked in front of the post office is more of a turquoise, the color, or so he's been told, of the sea.

But how can he know it? He's never designed anything like this, not in the last year. His room is full of sketches of airships large and small, vehicles that can run on train tracks, steam-driven machines to help farmers bring in their crops or chase down runaway horses or corral herds of cattle. He's tried to design efficient stills and a machine to toast bread without burning it and an air-cooled chest to store bedsheets and shirts, to make sleeping and dressing a little more bearable in the high heat of summer. But not a heavy bicycle propelled by a motor, not anything like this.

He looks up and down the street, sees only people he recognizes. No strangers, no one who might own this beautiful machine. He runs his hand over the steam tank, fingers leaving tracks in the dust, closing his eyes to shut out the town and try to coax more of the memory to life. Did he design this for someone else? Who? Why? How did it come to be here? The roads in the territory are improving, bringing people and commerce and government oversight, money and corruption and dreams, but most of the western territories are no place for a man on a motorized bicycle. Better to ride a horse, for when the road vanishes into dirt and rocks and grass.

But someone clearly rode this into town, to judge by its coating of dust and the bedroll tied behind the seat. It didn't come off a baggage car on the last train. Jared crouches down to look at the rubber tires. The treads are worn. He doesn't know as much about rubber as he knows about brass and iron, but his mind starts to turn anyway, thinking of ways to design a better, longer-wearing tire. He scoots forward a bit, to look more closely at the front tire, to trace the lines of tread and dig out the tiny pebble caught in one of the tracks.

“Hey!” someone yells, and he's so startled he falls back on his ass. “Get away from that!”

Jared gets to his feet, brushes off the seat of his pants, and opens his mouth to apologize, to ask about the provenance of the motor-bicycle, to learn something about it or the man who rode it into town, but the words stick in his throat. Because he knows that man too.

He can feel the spark of memory fire in his brain, feel the steam start to build, feel the gears and pistons creak into life, as a man strides towards him from the general store. He's wearing brown leather pants tucked into broken-down riding boots, scuffed leather coat hanging open to show a worn checked shirt, riding goggles pushed up onto his head. He's as dusty as his motorized turquoise bicycle, and Jared's memory strains with the effort of placing him in context.

The man stops short three feet away. His mouth drops open and his face goes pale under his freckles.

A familiar voice calls Jared's name, breaking the spell. Genevieve, calling him from the door of the bar. He has to get to work.

“Sorry,” he manages to say to the man, apologizing for touching the motorized bicycle, for being unable to remember why it or its owner are so familiar, for not knowing what else to say. “It's beautiful.”

And then he rushes across the street to where Genevieve is waiting for him, a towel in her hand, her expression both impatient and amused.

He asks her about the man later, but all she can tell him is “He took a room at the Madeleine” and then “Alex wouldn't stop pestering him about his vehicle and I thought he was going to hit him.”

“He didn't say where he was from?” Jared asks. Genevieve shakes her head, hands him a tray, points out at the drinkers scattered around the room. Jared obediently takes the tray and starts collecting empty glasses and dirty plates, thinking about the man and his motor-bicycle, strange and naggingly familiar at the same time.

When Alex comes in for a drink or three, Jared asks him about the man as well, but Alex can tell him nothing more than Genevieve could, other than the man seemed very protective and very close-mouthed about his vehicle.

After his shift is over, after Genevieve closes up for the night, Jared even walks down to the hotel, where Jim, the proprietor, tells him in no uncertain terms that the man with the motor-bicycle has gone up to his room and will not be disturbed. Jared isn't even allowed to take another look at the thing, for Jim has locked it up tight in the hotel's carriage house, as requested.

“Go to bed,” he adds, pointing out the lobby at the dark street. “Ask him about it in the morning.”

So Jared goes back to the bar and upstairs to his room, where he shuffles through all his papers and drawings, all his half-finished sketches, all his notes for new and interesting machines. There are no motorized bicycles, not even notes for an engine of appropriate size. He washes up and goes to bed, but he cannot sleep, only lie on his back and stare at the ceiling and turn it over in his mind, how familiar the motor-bicycle was, how familiar the man who owns it, and how those things could be so.

He must fall asleep at some point, because he is woken by the rattle of a doorknob, as if someone is trying to get into his room by mistake. Genevieve no longer rents the upstairs rooms to visitors, and in any case, if she or anyone else needed him, they would knock.

Jared can easily handle himself in a fight, but unlike many other things he does not know about himself, this is easy to explain. The frontier is a dangerous place, especially the hinterlands, especially the places were cattle money can breed lawlessness, and it is no thing for men – and women – from all walks of life to learn how to throw a punch. But he is not prepared for three men to break into his room, yank him out of bed, rifle through his stuff, and try to beat him into submission when he fights back.

They don't have a lantern. They are oddly quiet. When Jared tries to yell, to wake Genevieve – because she will bring her pistol to his rescue, and she is a good shot – one of the men counters by trying to throw a sack over his head.

Is this a kidnapping? If they wanted him dead, they would have shot him in his bed. His mind can flip through scenarios while his body fights the three intruders – death here, death elsewhere, kidnapping, theft – but none of them make sense. Who would want him dead? Who would find value in his half-baked ideas? And if someone wanted those, would they not just take him? They could have grabbed him off the street, or out of the back room of the bar, any time they wanted.

It is hard to tell through the sounds of scuffle, for the man with the sack has succeeded in pulling it over Jared's eyes, but Jared thinks a fourth man has joined the fray. Jared lands a punch, hears someone grunt, hears a thump, and someone commands “Stay down”. None of the three intruders has said a word, so Jared can only assume this is a fourth stranger.

Another thump. “I said - “

Momentarily freed, Jared yanks the sack off his head, blinks in the darkness. There is a shape sprawled on the floor, another half on top of the bed, and a third standing shape that eventually resolves into one man holding another in a headlock.

“Who sent you?” the attacker growls, but the man in his grip frees an elbow and jabs backwards. The attacker loosens his hold, Jared dives for the nearly-freed victim, they all crash into the dresser.

Any minute now someone is going to hear them, and Jared does not want the law getting involved until he knows what the hell is going on. He flails behind him, grabs the water pitcher off the dresser, and swings it into the side of the headlock victim's head. The man collapses. Jared pushes him away and gets into a fighting stance. He knows he should feel pain from the places where the intruders hit him, from where they grabbed him to yank him from his bed, but some part of him recognizes that this is a common reaction, this strange numbness to any injuries, and that when he has calmed down, he will feel every punch and every kick.

“Who are you?” he asks the one remaining stranger. “What do you want?”

“More will come,” the man says, which is no answer to Jared's question. “Get your things. We have to go.”

“What 'we'? I don't - “ The man seems to be patting himself down. He produces a match, lights the candle on the nightstand, sets it on the table, and starts to collect the sheets of paper and notebooks lying there. “Hey! Leave those alone!”

The man continues shuffling the papers into a stack, unconcerned. He glances around the room, and now there is just enough light for Jared to realize the man is looking for anything that might be tacked to the walls, any sketches or drawings Jared might be using as décor. There is an airship he is particularly proud of, large enough to carry travelers nearly across the country and luxurious enough to attract the wealthy, although even as he was designing it he could not imagine that it would really work. A buggy with a retractable canvas roof to protect passengers and driver from sudden rain or snow, intricate in its engineering but relatively plain in its decoration. A vague sketch of a city that Jared does not remember ever having seen, except twice during the deepest sleep.

The stranger pulls those drawings from the wall and stacks them with the rest. He is fast and efficient and Jared is too stunned by the events of the past few minutes to stop him. As the man puts everything together Jared notices the airguns holstered at his hips, no doubt charged and loaded and ready to shoot. He could have fired them at any time. He didn't.

“We have to go,” the man says, glancing around for something to carry the sketches and notebooks in. He notices the carpetbag under the bed, drops to a crouch to pull it out, and stuffs everything in it. As an afterthought, he yanks open the dresser drawers and pulls out two shirts, a handful of socks, and pushes them in the carpetbag on top of the drawings. He nods at Jared, then at the door. “If you stay, the next person who shows up will just shoot you in the head.” He hesitates. “I can keep you safe.”

Jared blows out the candle and follows him out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the back of the bar, where he can see that someone has forced the door.

There is not much moon, but the night is clear and there is enough light for Jared to see for sure what he suspected – the man who rescued him, who no doubt saved his life, is the man who owns the strangely familiar turquoise motor-bicycle, the man Jared somehow knows.

The man leads him down the empty street to the hotel and around the side of the building to the carriage house. Jared has calmed down enough from the fight to feel every punch the intruders landed, every piece of furniture he collided with. His jaw hurts, his ribs, his shoulder. His muscles start to twitch. But he knows without knowing how he knows that he is safe now, that this man will protect him. Jared doesn't know his name or where he might be from, how he came to be here or how they might know each other, but he is starting to understand that the knowledge is buried in his brain, hidden behind a locked door with all the other things he should know about himself but does not.

The man unlocks the carriage house and ushers Jared inside. There is a lantern hanging inside the doorway, its wick turned down low. The man takes it off its hook and turns up the flame so Jared can see the motorized bicycle, along with a two-person buggy and a covered carriage with glass windows and tufted velvet upholstery, “The Madeleine” painted on the side in elegant gold script.

“We'll stay in here tonight and leave in the morning,” the man says, handing Jared the lantern. Jared holds it up, trying to get a better look at the motor-bicycle without the man noticing and yelling at him again. There is a bedroll tied behind the seat, and the saddlebags look full. “We should go now but my headlamp is busted and I don't want to ride into a ditch in the dark.”

“Who were those men?” Jared asks. Not the answer he most wants, but the answer he is most likely to get.

“I think they were Pellegrino's men.” Jared does not know who that is. “He poached Morgan and Hodge in the last year. He wanted Chau, but he can't be bought. He's a good man.”

Jared knows these names should mean something to him. They don't.

“Do you even remember me?” the man asks, his voice changing. He sounds less businesslike, less sure. He stands very still, but his fingers twitch as if he wants to grab something, or to move.

“No,” Jared says.

It is not quite the truth, but how can he tell this man that he knows him, without being able to remember his name or anything else? Switches flip uselessly in his brain. A chain slips its gears. There is nothing but an empty space where knowledge of this man would sit.

The man's eyes flash but otherwise his face doesn't change. Jared can sense the disappointment and anger under the man's skin. He can't tell if either emotion is directed towards him, so maybe he does not know the man after all.

“I'm sorry,” he says. _I know your motorized bicycle. I know I built it._

“Never mind,” the man says, resigned. “You should get some sleep.”

But Jared knows he won't be able to, not until he knows why this man and his motor-bicycle are so familiar, and why strangers attacked him in his room.

He needs to tell Genevieve.

“I can't leave,” he says. “I have to tell Genevieve what happened. Someone tried to kill me!”

“Leave her a note. We can't get the law involved.”

“Why not?”

“Just trust me on this.” The man heaves a sigh and leans against the buggy's front wheel. “My name is Jensen. You say you don't remember me, so you can believe me or not, but you used to know me. Men are after you for something they think you know, and they'll keep coming until I can get you home where we'll have more protection and you'll be safe. Okay?”

“I think I can fix your headlamp,” Jared says. The name sparks no recognition in him. “In exchange you'll tell me what happened to me and why I don't remember you.” He is starting to understand that however he came to Padua, and whatever the reasons he remembers nothing later than a year, are linked to this man – to Jensen – and to at least some of Jared's sketches and drawings. The answers are all in the same place. He just needs to find the key that will unlock the chest where they have been hidden.

In Padua, he has only ever worked behind the bar at the Silver Horse, and he remembers no other profession or training, but when he thought about his earlier life, the life he doesn't know, where he might have come from and what he might have done, he always suspected he was an engineer, a scientist. How else could he have made all those sketches of machines and other inventions that sometimes constructed themselves in his brain before he could commit them to paper? All those drawings now stuffed into the carpetbag Jensen has tied to the motor-bicycle – how else would he be able to make them? Some of them are far too sophisticated to have come from the pencil of an ordinary bartender in an ordinary railroad town in an empty corner of this sparsely-settled state, no matter how clever that bartender might be.

Jensen knows everything Jared doesn't. Jared can tell. He just has to be convinced to share it.

Jared squats in front of the motor-bicycle's headlamp, holds the lantern close so he can see what might be broken and what he might be able to fix. The glass bulb and the housing are intact, but he would need to take it apart to accurately diagnose what is wrong. He stands, holds up the lantern, looks around the carriage house. The only tools he can see are large ones, for fixing large problems – flat tires, broken wheels, bent axles, ripped upholstery. Nothing mechanical, certainly nothing small or specialized enough to repair a motorized bicycle built at the far limit of engineering possibility.

“You can't fix it with anything here,” Jensen says. “My plan was to take the train from Sheridan. They won't suspect us of going west to go east. It shouldn't take more than a day to get to there, and when we get home you can fix my motor-bicycle.”

“I built it,” Jared murmurs.

“I know. You built it for me.” Jensen stands, making the buggy creak with the sudden redistribution of weight. He rests a hand briefly, almost gently, on Jared's shoulder, then climbs into the carriage and lies down on one of the bench seats. “You can take the bedroll,” he says from inside. “Turn down the lantern.”

Jared turns the flame down slightly, not wanting anyone to see the light from outside – he has no idea who else might come after him, but if the men Jensen beat into submission in his room come to and come looking, he does not want to make it easy for them to find him – and continues his close examination of the motor-bicycle. Is this the knowledge those men wanted? The knowledge of how to build something like this? Do they want the engine? He can tell, or perhaps he can remember, the machine's hybrid engine, part steam and part electric, a new way to coax more power from it, more speed, more endurance. Was this what he did before he lost his memory? Was he a glorified mechanic? Did he build engines? Did he design them for wheeled vehicles? He must have designed trains and airships as well, to judge from the sketches and finished drawings Jensen took from his room. He always assumed his airship sketches were fanciful things pulled from dreams and imagination, powered by wind and steam and hot, hot air, but perhaps they are his brain's attempt to return his memory to him, to wind its gears and pull the correct levers and spark its engine back to life.

He has seen them, of course, in the newspapers and on posters and a few times sailing over the town, large as life and out of his reach, but his drawings are not mere reproductions of an image. They are rather details of the intricate engines, mechanical designs only a man with intimate knowledge of their inner workings would be able to devise.

Pieces start to fit themselves together. He doesn't remember any more of his life before Padua, before Genevieve and Jim and Alex and the rest of the townspeople, before the mountains and the windswept plains, but he can begin to make a sketch, a bare outline of what he might have done in his earlier life.

But he cannot fit Jensen into this outline. There is still no space for the man who says Jared used to know him.

Jared turns down the wick in the lantern. The light dims to almost nothing. He rests the lantern on a crate and climbs into the buggy, resting his arms on his thighs and staring at the dark wall past the edge of the buggy's shafts. His body is sore now, the beating he took from the strangers in his room finally making itself known to his muscles and bones. He wants to lie down, but the buggy is too small and the floor of the carriage house too dirty. Jensen has locked them in, otherwise he would sneak out to leave Genevieve a note, although he has no idea what he would tell her – Strangers broke into my room and tried to kill me, I was rescued by a man I recognize but don't remember, he's taking me to Sheridan and points east, don't worry. How could he leave her with that? She will send the sheriff on the fastest horse around to waylay him and Jensen at the train station, and he will never learn about his past.

He will send her a telegram from Sheridan.

No, he should at least leave her a note before he goes, to tell her that he will be fine and if she finds men still unconscious on his floor, she should have them arrested for his attempted kidnapping and murder. He climbs out of the buggy, rummages around in his carpetbag for a piece of paper he can use, and then tries to find a pencil. No luck. He'll have to wait for morning and prevail upon Jensen to let him at least tell Jim what happened.

He is tired now, and sore, and confused, and yet, somehow, he knows he is in good hands. He trusts Jensen, for as little as he knows him.

Jensen said he could have the bedroll to sleep on, so Jared unties it from the back of the motor-bicycle, unrolls it on the carriage house floor, lies down, and tries to sleep.

He dreams of the city in the drawing from his wall, the city he has never seen with his own eyes, but which has appeared in his dreams twice before. The buildings are close together, made of brick and stone, and some still made of wood, glass windows fitted tightly in painted frames. The streets are crowded with people and carts and carriages, most pulled by horses but a few with steam engines clanking and hissing their way through the crowds. Everywhere is noise. There is no breeze, but the air is cool and damp, as if after a rainstorm. The sky above the buildings and streets and crowds is pale blue, with the barest wisps of cloud. Jared's heart races with excitement. He has news to share, ideas, plans. He always does.

And Jensen is there, in a high-ceilinged laboratory, tall windows letting in light, pieces of machinery and scraps of wood and metal everywhere, tools, pipes, steamboxes, sheets of paper covering the tables along with gears and cogs and levers and switches and glass bulbs and tangles of wire. Jared has him pushed against the edge of a table, bodies pressed together, his hands on Jensen's face and Jensen's hands on his hips, the two of them kissing almost lazily, as if they have all the time in the world and no one to interrupt them in this high-ceilinged space with only the faintest sounds of the city outside. Jensen mouth tastes of wine and fish and fried potatoes and something sweet, not boiled candy but... Jared's tongue probes deeper... air and sugar, something light, maybe meringue.

Jared pulls away, grins, goes to his knees on the lab's cluttered floor. He opens Jensen's pants, unbuttons Jensen's suspenders, lifts his shirt, pulls out his cock. It is growing hot and stiff, and Jensen touches Jared's face as Jared looks up, still grinning, and takes Jensen in his mouth.

...and he wakes up.

“Shit,” he whispers. Jensen wasn't lying – Jared did know him. Jared knew him well.

Jared waits for his heart to slow and his breathing to even out, and then gets to his feet and tiptoes over to the carriage, where Jensen is snoring faintly. Jared climbs in, sits on the seat across from Jensen, and shakes his shoulder.

“Wake up,” he says, and repeats it until Jensen does.

Jensen seems to wake almost instantly, sitting straight up and saying “What's wrong?” as if he weren't sound asleep not three seconds ago.

“We knew each other,” Jared says.

“That's what I told you.”

“No. I mean... intimately.”

There is no light inside the carriage, but Jared can sense Jensen rubbing his hand over his face, and when he answers, his voice is tired. “Yes. We did. Very much so. Do you remember now?”

“I don't know. I had a dream.”

“A dream?” Jensen's voice is unsure.

“Yeah. I've dreamed about that city before – I think it's much farther east, on the coast, because the air and the sky are so different – but you were in it this time. We were, uh, we were - “

“Naked?”

“Clothed. Kissing. In a laboratory, I think, or a machine shop. But not a shop to sell things, more a place to fabricate things, or a kind of studio, where someone could tinker with his inventions.” He doesn't remember a drafting table or any clear flat space from his dream, aside from the table they were leaning against, but he does not doubt that whatever the space was, wherever it was, it was more than just a place to build things.

“You might have been dreaming about your lab,” Jensen says.

“That's why you came to get me, isn't it? Because we were... we loved each other.”

There is no response. The whole world is silent, even the carriage in which they sit.

“I'm sorry,” Jared says eventually. “I still don't remember, but I think my brain is trying to help me. Seeing you – when I saw you in the street, when I was looking at your motor-bicycle – I knew it then. I don't remember you, I can't put you in any kind of context, but I know I designed and built your motor-bicycle, and I'd only do that if you paid me, or if I - “

“If you loved me.”

“I must have. My dream felt real, like a memory and not a dream. My brain feels like a stalled engine, and if I could just kick-start it back to life, if I could get the boiler going and the pistons moving, I'd remember everything. You're the spark. You just have to strike a flame at the right time.”

Jensen chuckles. “You haven't changed at all. I don't know what I thought I'd find, but this wasn't it.”

“I don't understand.”

“Okay.” Now the carriage shifts and creaks as Jensen moves around on the seat across from Jared. “I can't tell you everything now – it will take some time and I have to figure out what to say – but I can tell you that I chased Pellegrino's men across the country not knowing if I'd even find you alive, and I still can't believe I did. I think you dreamed about your lab in New York, which means you might remember what you were working on, which means you might remember the things Pellegrino's men tried to kill you for. Which means we need to go home, because he's not the only one looking for you.” He pauses for so long Jared thinks he might be done speaking, but then adds “This is really hard for me. You don't remember me, and I never stopped thinking about you. I don't know what to do.”

“Take me back to New York.” Jared's memories are still locked in a chest, but now he knows he can find the key. He thinks Jensen might be it.

“That was the plan. Now will you go back to sleep?”

“I don't think I can.”

Jensen chuckles again. “Your brain was always working. You were always thinking of things, reinventing the wheel. Building a better mousetrap.” He sighs. “If you never remember anything else, don't tell me. If you can, pretend you still know me.”

Jared has no answer for that. He cannot say for sure if he will ever be able to put Jensen into the bare outline of his “before”, if he will ever be able to slot the man into any of the multitudinous empty spaces in his memory. He is afraid to promise, because he is afraid to hope, but he meant it when he said he just needed to crank the engine of his brain back to life, and he meant it when he said Jensen was the catalyst for that rebirth.

He climbs out of the carriage and lies back down on Jensen's bedroll, and if he has any dreams this time, they are gone in the morning.

He sleeps deeply despite his aches and his confusion, waking to Jensen shaking his shoulder and telling him the sun is rising and they must go.

“I left a message at the front desk,” Jensen says. “For the hotelier to give Genevieve. That was her name, right? Your boss.”

Jared sits, stretches, feels his muscles protest. He is still sore from last night. “What did you say in the note?”

“That if she finds strange men unconscious in your bedroom, she should turn them in to the sheriff for trying to kill you. That you're going east with a friend and that you're safe.” He hands Jared a roll cut in half with a slice of ham sandwiched in the middle. “No time for coffee. Let's go.”

Jared shakes out the bedroll, rolls it back up, and ties it behind the motor-bicycle seat. Jensen makes a noise that sounds more affectionate than annoyed, and re-secures it. He unlocks the door to the carriage house, pushes the motorized bicycle outside into the quiet morning, and slings his leg over the seat.

“You'll have to hold on,” he tells Jared, gesturing behind him. Jared climbs on to the back of the motor-bicycle, feeling nervous and awkward, and wraps his arms around Jensen's waist as Jensen tries to coax the engine to life.

The motor-bicycle sputters, hisses, clanks, but then something catches, the engine purrs, and they are off.

Jared has barely enough time to register that he is really leaving Padua with a man he knows but does not remember, before a man stumbles out of Genevieve's bar, yells “Hey! Stop!” and gives chase. He pelts after them, screaming for his compatriots, and a stable door opens and two more men come after Jared and Jensen on very fast horses.

A bang behind them and dust kicks up off to the left.

“Hang on!” Jensen calls over his shoulder, releasing one of the handlebars to wrest the airgun out of its holster, turn in his seat, and shoot at the men behind them.

Jared hangs on, terrified and exhilarated. He is unable to resist the urge to half stand, to turn himself, to see if Jensen has hit anyone. One of the men behind them – Pellegrino's men, Jared remembers Jensen called them – has an advanced-looking rifle, which he is able to fire one-handed, holding his horse's reins with his other hand as the rifle muzzle smokes and bullets spit past Jared's head.

The man's aim is close, but Jensen's is closer. The man with the rifle falls backwards off his horse, and the other man doubles over but does not fall. But he cannot follow either.

Jensen slides the airgun back into its holster and swings off the road. The motor-bicycle comes to a stop, so sudden Jared nearly tumbles off it, and Jensen is standing and touching him all over before he can catch his breath.

“Are you okay?” Jensen demands. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” Jared says, the insanity of everything finally catching up to him, and he laughs. He has put his feet down and rests a hand on the motor-bicycle seat to keep his balance, as he laughs until he can no longer breathe.

This is beyond anything he could have imagined, this flight from Padua on the back of a turquoise motor-bicycle propelled by what is likely the only engine of its kind in the world, having been nearly murdered in his bed and rescued by a man he knows but does not recognize, now on their way to a city he only knows from his dreams.

“Are you okay?” Jensen repeats urgently, both hands on Jared's shoulders. “Look at me.”

Jared nods, waving a hand uselessly, trying to catch his breath, to explain, although there is no way for him to articulate why being shot at and nearly killed a second time is so wildly funny.

But eventually he calms, catches his breath, shakes his head at himself and his inexplicable reaction.

Jensen's expression is inscrutable. He climbs back on his motorized bicycle, gestures for Jared to hold on to him again, and they continue on their way.

They arrive in Sheridan past sunset and are guided to the train station by streetlamps and the lights in the buildings. The train Jensen says they need leaves in two hours, more than enough time for them to eat and stretch their legs, for Jared to realize that his body is exhausted but his mind is racing. Jensen is growing more familiar, but it could simply be that Jared has spent some time with him.

Jensen secures a sleeping berth on the train, with a green-upholstered bench that converts to a bed, a second bed that pulls down from the wall, and a tiny washbasin behind a cabinet door. He stows Jared's carpetbag and his own saddlebags as the train pulls out of the station. He starts to set up the beds before Jared stops him.

“I won't be able to sleep,” Jared says. “You said you couldn't tell me everything in Jim's carriage house, but you can tell me now. I have the whole trip back to New York to remember who I was, so I might as well start.” He sits on the bench looks at Jensen expectantly. Jensen sighs.

“Okay,” he says, sitting as well, angling himself so he and Jared can see each other. “The short version is that we both work – worked – for the industrialist Mark Sheppard. You were one of his pet scientists, and I was internal security. You built my motor-bicycle, but you figured that out already. You called it a vapor-velo.” He chuckles. “You never were good at naming things. But you're a genius.” He says it simply, as if this is a fact everyone knows. Jared tries to keep his expression neutral. He needs Jensen to say something his brain can attach to, something that will spark a dead memory to life. This is not it. Genevieve told him he was a genius when he rigged steam heat in their rooms over the bar, so they would not have to rely solely on tiny stoves and bedwarmers in the dead of winter.

“What happened to me?” Jared asks.

“Of course you want to cut to the chase. I don't know what happened. You were alone in the lab, working on something you said was going to change the world – although you said that about a lot of things – and there was an explosion. I knew you were too smart and too careful to have blown yourself up. Kane thought it was sabotage. Pellegrino's been snooping around for years, trying to steal our ideas and people, and Kane said we couldn't trust him not to do something that drastic to beat the competition. Morgan hadn't left yet, and he said it must have been a mistake, a miscalculation, something. Chau said you were too smart for that. Mr Sheppard said the same. Everyone thought you were dead, but I couldn't believe that. You vanished in the explosion, but when no one found your body....” He trails off.

Something flickers behind Jared's eyes, a vague image of a young man of Oriental extraction - dark hair, slanted eyes, well-made clothes under a white lab coat, goggles, a working man's leather gloves. In the image the young man is gesturing at something with a coil of copper tubing, Jared does not know what. Is this Chau? Morgan? Someone else? A colleague, certainly. There is something of the scientist about him, an inventor's air.

But Jared still has no memory of the lab, no memory of the explosion, no memory of what he might have been doing alone in the place.

“Tell me about me,” he says. “Us. New York.”

Jensen sighs again, but his face softens. “New York is... it's New York. Big, crowded, loud, always moving. You can get anything you want, at almost any time. You can be anyone. You can be _with_ anyone.” His gaze fixes on Jared's, as if willing him to remember the two of them. “I lived with the rest of my men, in a house near Sheppard's lab. You had rooms in a rooming house. We never... I would come to you.”

“Did everyone know about us? Were we, I don't know, were we public?” He was always circumspect, the few times he visited the boys at the Birdcage, but no one in Padua ever commented on his predilections, and he never had the impression he was doing anything wrong. But he and Jensen were colleagues, in a sense, both employed by the same man. Jared does not know Mr Sheppard, other than what he and the rest of the country has read in the papers, and for all he can guess, the man disapproves of fraternization among his employees.

“Yes and no. We were more of an open secret. Mrs Smith – your landlady – she knew. She couldn't not. But she never said anything. I think she liked the fact that you had someone who wasn't a scientist like you, someone who could get you to stop talking, stop moving, and just....” He shrugs. Jared can fill in the rest of the sentence. He hopes they did not disturb his fellow boarders too much. “We didn't make a big deal out of it, but we'd go places together, official functions and social events and plays and restaurants, like two men going out as friends, and people could think what they wanted.”

Jared's mind is spinning, attracting this new information and adding it to the growing pile of things he is learning about himself that he does not remember. He has seen New York in his dreams, he can remember the place when he is asleep, but now that he is awake, now that Jensen is trying to fill in the vast empty blank spaces... nothing. He remembers nothing. None of it is familiar.

But he still feels the pull, the awareness that Jensen will protect him, the knowledge that Jensen can be trusted with his life. The knowledge that Jensen loved him. Knowing that, knowing they were lovers, they were a couple – now the pull makes some sense.

“So you can guess how crazy I was when you disappeared,” Jensen goes on. “You were – you were mine. I was yours. And you were gone. And no one knew where, or why, or even if you were still alive. No one was even sure what you were working on, only that if there was a prototype, it was dust. Chau did some work with you, but he wasn't any help. All the scientists looked for your notes, Mrs Smith went through your rooms – I couldn't bring myself to even visit the rooming house – my men knocked on doors and ran investigations but no one could find you or these elusive notes. And like I said, I had to believe you were still alive. I was convinced Pellegrino was involved somehow, but Collins and Kane went to talk to him without me. I think they were afraid I'd do something violent.” He chuckles, but his face is tense, his eyes hard. “They weren't wrong. I would have beaten it out of him, whatever he knew. I can't say I would have stopped if he told me, either.”

“I'm sorry,” Jared says. It is all he can think of to say. He remembers Jensen coming to his rescue in the middle of the night, the sounds of men fighting, and he remembers Jensen's accurate shooting, half turned on the seat of his motor-bicycle, the vapor-velo, bringing down one of their pursuers while still keeping the machine moving. Jensen is clearly a man who can hold his own in any conflict. But Jared cannot quite reconcile that with the apparent fact of his violence, the idea that he would have beaten someone to bloody pulp for their part in Jared's disappearance.

“We looked for you for a year,” Jensen says, collecting himself. “Well, I did. Everyone else finally accepted that you must be dead, because if you were still alive, we'd know. You would have contacted me, if nothing else. If you were being held for ransom, Mr Sheppard would have gotten a ransom demand, probably for whatever you were working on when the lab blew up. But he didn't. I didn't hear anything. Mrs Smith packed up your things and gave them to me, and I put them in the guard house attic. Chau has most of your papers. I couldn't... I had a hard time, for a long time. But I was still following Pellegrino – I knew he was involved somehow, and if he wasn't, he was looking for you and your invention too, so if I kept an eye on him, I'd know when he learned something useful.

“And then he found you. I followed his men to Wyoming – I only told Kane I was going, because someone had to know where I went in case I never came back – you know the rest.” He takes a breath. “I've never been so scared in my life, that I'd follow them to the middle of nowhere and find out you were dead. And then I saw you, and you were alive, but you didn't know me. You still don't, do you. You don't remember anything I've just told you.”

Jared's mind is still reeling. He can feel doors opening, inviting in new bits of knowledge, new facts, but there is no connection between them. He feels as if a breeze has blown through an open window, scattering all the papers on his desk, flinging them around the room, and if he could only collect them back into some semblance of order, he would understand everything. He would remember.

Everything is there, he knows it. He desperately needs Jensen to give him the key, and so far, the key is not forthcoming.

He knows he should say something. He doesn't know what.

“Okay,” Jensen says eventually. He presses his hands into his thighs, looks down, looks back up. His face is composed, but his eyes are sad. “I don't know what else you want to know. Losing you was like losing a piece of myself. There was a hole in my chest big enough to swallow the world. And now I've found you, I'm taking you back home in one piece, and I'm a stranger to you.”

“You're not a stranger,” Jared says. “I don't remember you – I'm so sorry, I'm really trying, I know it's all there somewhere but I can't get to it – but I knew I knew you, when I saw you in the street. I knew it. So I do remember you, somehow. I just need to remember the rest of it.”

“I believe you. But it's hard, Jared. You're sitting right here, right next to me, after a year – I had to accept the possibility that you were dead. Do you know what that's like? To tell yourself that you're never going to see the man you love? You'll never touch him again. You'll never make him laugh. You'll never have to listen to him babble all over himself for an hour about some obscure thing he's invented. He's gone. And then you do find him, he's still alive and well and living in some railroad town in the middle of nowhere, and he has no idea who you are.”

Jensen's voice is tight. His eyes are hard again, his face tense, as if he were repeating that he would have beaten Pellegrino to death for his supposed hand in Jared's disappearance.

“I'm not mad at you,” Jensen goes on, but his voice, his expression, do not change. “But I can't live like this. Either you remember your life or you don't. You're the scientist, not me. I don't know how brains work. I don't know what to do.”

Jared's conscious mind does not know either. But he is compelled to act by the part of him that recognized something in Jensen – was it just two days ago? - compelled by the hidden, shadow self that needs only the cold engine of his brain to wake and bring it to life.

He leans forward, lays his hand against Jensen's cheek, and kisses him.

Jensen does not even hesitate before kissing him back.

Their kisses grow hungry, desperate, and soon they are pulling at each other's clothes, parting reluctantly when they need room to divest themselves of trousers or boots or undershirts. Jensen pushes Jared onto his back on the seat and Jared pulls his knees up and lets his thighs part. The seat is barely long enough and too narrow, so Jared has to angle his body to the side to give Jensen room. There is no time for cream or oil or any of the lubricants that the working girls and boys at the Birdhouse use, so Jensen sucks noisily on his fingers, kneels on the green upholstery between Jared's spread thighs, and slides first one and then two fingers into Jared's body.

Jared moans involuntarily as Jensen fingers him. Jensen moves his hand, rearranges himself, and guides himself inside, thick cock replacing probing fingers.

How could Jared have forgotten this? Jensen inside him, on top of him, hips moving steadily, face still, eyes dark? His brain is aflame, his muscles, his nerve endings, every part of him intensely aware of every part of Jensen. He has even forgotten how crowded they are on the compartment bench, having not even bothered to convert the seat to a bed. The close quarters only pull them closer, heighten their awareness of each other. Jared's fingers rake down Jensen's back to squeeze his ass, hands clenching to encourage him to thrust harder, deeper.

Jensen is quiet. Jared is not. This is too much, and not enough, and he can feel, at the very edge of that vast empty plain that is the memory of life before Padua, the curtain starting to lift, the barriers starting to open, the engine of his brain shuddering back to life. He can feel the gears start to turn, the pipes start to fill with steam. He pants and moans and begs, loud enough that he can barely hear Jensen over his own harsh breathing and the creaking of the seat beneath them and under everything, the rolling, whistling, rumbling of the train.

“Do you remember this?” Jensen asks, his voice low, head dropping so Jared can feel his hot breath on his ear. “Do you remember my cock? How I made you feel?”

“No,” Jared gasps, “yes, I don't know. Uhh – please....”

Jensen's hips pump faster, and then he pushes himself up, wraps a hand around Jared's swollen cock, and strokes hard until Jared cries out and comes over his hand. All the time Jensen is watching him, face flushed and eyes on his, so beautiful that Jared is amazed his brain would let him forget this. In all his sketches, all his drawings, there are no people, save the tiny figures he would add to indicate relative size or passenger seating. He has never drawn faces.

He wonders if a year ago, before Padua, before he lost his memory, back when he knew Jensen, did he ever draw him? Are there sketches of that face, that body, hidden anywhere in New York?

Jensen touches Jared's face with his free hand, then leans down again, arms wrapped around Jared's head, and his hips pick up speed and rhythm until he groans his release into Jared's shoulder.

Jared brushes his hand through Jensen's hair. He doesn't remember this, despite the movement he felt in his brain. He should. He will.

“It's been so long,” Jensen mumbles into his shoulder. “God, I missed you. I'll fuck you every day if that's what it takes, until you remember me.”

“What a hardship,” Jared says, teasing, and can feel Jensen snickering into his shoulder.

“_Hard_.”

And then Jared is laughing too, both of them shaking with amusement at their immature joke. And it suddenly does not matter if Jared ever remembers anything, because he can always start over and learn about Jensen from scratch. He wants his memory back, of course, but if he never does get it, he can still make a life with this man, can still come to love him again.

“Tell me,” Jensen says eventually, soberly. “Do you remember anything now?”

Jensen loves him, searched for him for a year, and Jared cannot tell him the truth. He can only lie. “Yes.”

He feels Jensen's relief more than anything, and it causes him guilt. But he could feel something shift in his head as they rocked together, and he can feel it still – the barest nudge, the first attempt to oil a gear that has rusted stuck, the faintest hiss of steam as a boiler starts to heat. He will get it back. Somehow. Jensen will help.

Jensen pulls out and climbs off him, stretches, grins down at him. “I should've sent Mr Sheppard a telegram from Sheridan,” he says, “but I wanted to be sure I could get you back.” He offers a hand. Jared takes it, and Jensen pulls him off the bench and onto his feet. “I'll send it the next time we stop.” He yawns. “I don't know about you, but I'm beat. It's been a very, very long few days.” He touches Jared's face, just for a second, then turns and puts his underclothes and shirt back on.

They convert the bench to a bed, pull down the second bed, ready themselves for sleep. Jensen takes the bottom bunk, Jared the top.

“Good night,” Jensen says, before turning off the light.

Jared lies awake, listening to Jensen breathing, listening to the train, trying to fit together all the pieces he has acquired, all the big and little bits of information Jensen has given him. His work, his life, the people he knew, the places he went, the rooms where he slept. His relationship with Jensen.

He is asleep before he realizes it, and he dreams of New York again, this time what must have been his bedroom, for he is lying on his back on a bed with a white-painted iron bedstead, alone, listening to the driving rain outside and thinking how pleased he is with his life. He is making progress on his projects. He and Jensen have tickets for a play in two days, a comedy because it was his turn to choose. They will eat at a restaurant, and after the show Jensen will return to these rooms and stay for a while. There is a new wax recording out by a singer Jensen enjoys, and perhaps Jared will take some time tomorrow to purchase it, so they can play it in the background while they fuck. Jensen likes music and Jared likes to make him happy.

The dream follows Jared to his laboratory, on his errands, to dinner with Jensen, to bed, to sleep. In that dream he sees other men, some women, people he must have known in his old life. He still does not know how he lost his memory, and he does not know what he was building that would cause someone to chase him halfway across the country, to a railroad town so distant from New York it could be the other side of the world, even with the train to carry him there. He does not dream of this thing that would bring men to Padua to try and kill him.

But he dreams of Jensen, and the young man in the lab coat and goggles and leather gloves, and a gentleman with an accent and short night-black hair and a brocade waistcoat. There is a woman too, brown hair piled on her head, a gold pin shaped like a long-legged bird pinning closed the collar of her crisp shirt.

A heron, his dreaming mind supplies, and he knows the dark-haired gentleman in the suit is his boss, the industrialist, Mr Sheppard. The woman is Mr Sheppard's secretary, Miss Harris. And the young man is Chau. His colleague, his friend.

He wakes up. The compartment is dark, and quiet save for Jensen's even breathing. The train rumbles and creaks. Jared lies in the dark, staring at the ceiling, not sure what to think, what to feel. He remembers these people – and why these three? Why not his landlady? Or Jensen's colleagues Kane and Collins? Why not Morgan, who must have been a fellow scientist, who left Mr Sheppard's employ?

He tries to tease something from the fragments of his dream, but there is little else. The lab, his bedroom, the Volta. He has a very clear memory of cranking the Volta to life, fitting a new wax cylinder in its cradle, lowering the arm with its steel needle, listening as the voice of a singer whose name he cannot recall pours out of the trumpet-shaped speaker. He remembers Jensen's expression – blissful, transported, grateful – and he remembers pushing him against the drawing table, pressing against him, kissing him so hard neither of them can breathe.

Jared closes his eyes, suddenly embarrassed to be thinking about fucking someone he barely remembers while that person is asleep in the bed below his. And yet he kissed Jensen before, and they pulled each other's clothes off and he spread his legs on that very bed, letting Jensen inside him, grabbing at him, encouraging him, wanting him to bury himself deeper and deeper.

Jared is well awake now, his brain following this track of memory, passing through this suddenly-opened door. They had sex against the drawing table, he remembers – he spun Jensen around to face it, opened his own trousers, yanked Jensen's down, pushed inside him, grunting into his shoulder and pulling Jensen's chin around, their mouths meeting in a sloppy, greedy kiss.

He bites his lip now, feeling his cock start to fill as he remembers – and it is very clearly a memory, not a dream, not an invention of his overexcited brain – he remembers how Jensen's body felt around his cock, how they panted for breath, how he grunted and Jensen groaned and how hard Jensen gripped the edge of the drawing table as Jared thrust deeper and deeper into him.

This was not the night he dreamed of, when he played his new wax cylinder for Jensen after they returned to his rooms from the play. This is another night. What were they doing before this? Had they gone out for dinner? A drink? A show? Had Mr Sheppard hosted a reception they must attend? Had they simply met after work? No matter – he has conflated two memories, two events that really happened, and while he would like to be able to tease them apart, he cannot stop his mind from spinning out the rest of the night, how he climaxed first, how he wrapped his fist around Jensen's cock, stroking him to climax as well.

He is breathing hard now, his hand squeezing his own cock, desperately wanting to stroke himself off and acutely aware of Jensen fast asleep in the compartment with him. Jared has never been quiet in bed. He cannot bring himself off in silence now. But he cannot wake Jensen either.

There is nothing to do but let himself go, as quickly and quietly as possible.

He listens for any change in Jensen's breathing, afterwards. Nothing. Jared lets himself sigh with relief. He was not expecting such intimate memories to return, but perhaps it is only what his body remembers first, now that it has felt Jensen inside it again. Perhaps it is only muscle memory, dragging his brain along.

He falls asleep again.

He is woken by light on his face, and opens his eyes to see Jensen fully dressed, pulling the curtain aside and letting in the sun.

“Good morning,” Jensen says cheerfully. “Sleep well?”

“I remembered you,” Jared says, and this time it is the truth. “We went to see a play and when we got back to my rooms afterwards, I'd bought a wax cylinder and played it for you while we, uh, you know.” He should not be shy about putting words to something they have so recently done, but he is. He could not explain this if Jensen asked, other than to say he still feels as if Jensen is partly a stranger.

“I do know.” Jensen grins. “I remember that. You bought it for me, even though the Volta was yours. You wanted to play it for me before we had sex, and then you wanted to play it while we had sex. But we couldn't really hear it from the bedroom, so I bent you over the sofa instead.”

“It was different in the dream. I had a drawing table and turned you around to face it and, um, fucked you from behind.” He wants to hide his head. He wants to climb off the bed and do to Jensen in reality what he did to him in dream. He does not know what he wants. He wants his brain to stop, for once.

“You dreamed about two different nights like they were the same one. You do remember.”

Jared climbs off the bed, stands facing Jensen. Jensen's face is bright and open and eager. Jared does not want to disappoint him.

“There was a girl,” he says, “with a heron pin. Miss Harris? And I think I remember Chau. He's younger than we are. Oriental. Short. Smart.”

“All those things. He took what papers of yours we could find, so he could continue your work. But he didn't have everything, so he couldn't.” He touches Jared's arm. “It's coming back,” he says, encouraging.

“Some things, yeah.”

“Do you want breakfast? Get dressed and we'll find the dining car.”

“Not yet. Um. I woke up in the middle of the night and, uh, I'd had that dream....”

He cannot tell Jensen what he wants now, what he wanted last night. He takes Jensen's face in both hands and kisses him instead.

Jensen lets himself be moved, arranged. He gives over all control, and Jared takes it eagerly, desperate to retain some agency in his own life. The rocking of the train sets them both off-balance but Jensen eventually manages a good grip on the upper bunk and Jared gets a good grip on him, and Jensen pushes back as Jared pushes forward, one hand stretched out over the upper bunk for leverage and his other hand digging into Jensen's hip.

Jensen groans into the blanket. Jared opens his mouth against Jensen's shoulder, teeth pressing gently through his shirt. They shift with the train. Jensen's body is as hot and tight as Jared remembered, the fabric of his shirt rough under Jared's tongue, his moans soft and stifled.

“I remember,” Jared pants. “You and... and.... Ah, god, I can't... I can't. I forgot this. How could I....”

Jensen's only answer is another moan. Jared's hips roll against him.

“You first,” Jensen says, as if he knows, can tell how close Jared is.

Jared lets go of the upper bunk and closes his fist around Jensen's cock, tight strokes up and down until Jensen stutters and shoots over his hand.

“Come on,” Jensen pants. “Come on, Jared, come inside me.”

It takes so little.

Jared presses his face into Jensen's shoulder, catching his breath, feeling the gears move, the pipes shudder as steam courses through them, waking the dormant parts of his brain. He will never, as long as he lives, ever let himself forget how this feels.

Eventually they separate, kiss, dress, find the dining car. Something has shifted in Jared's head. He can feel the door creaking open, starting to let light through to illuminate the vast darkened plain of his lost memories. He knows little of how brains work, but it strikes him as amusing and odd that the key to his missing life is such a carnal one. If he had known sex would be the spark that brought his past back to him, he would have visited the Birdcage more often.

But no, not just sex – sex with Jensen. And there were no boys at the Birdcage who looked like him, none with the same eyes, the same face, the same bow to their thighs.

And so they continue on across the west, the midwest. Jensen talks and Jared listens, and sometimes Jared talks and Jensen listens – Jared tells him about Padua, and Genevieve and Jim and Alex and the rest of the townspeople, about his inventions, his sketches, the things he accomplished in an effort to make life better or just more exciting. He takes the sketches and drawings out of the carpetbag to explain them, to show Jensen what he did during the last year, who he was.

A gentleman in the club car loans Jared a pencil and soon he is sketching again, this time trying to chase his last professional invention, the thing he was building in New York that precipitated this particular chapter of his life. He cannot remember it. Jensen alternates between encouraging him, believing it the key to the entirety of Jared's memory, and begging him to stop.

“Pellegrino knows it's not in New York,” Jensen says. “The only way for him to get it is to get you. You can't give him anything.”

“He already tried to kill me for it,” Jared says reasonably. “He thinks I have it, or at least I have all the notes and sketches for it. So I might as well try to remember what it is. Besides” - and he leans forward and quickly kisses Jensen on the lips - “I know you'll protect me.”

He has easily fallen back into what he assumes were the rhythms of their relationship. Jensen is familiar to him, even if he cannot articulate why, and growing more so all the time. It is nothing for Jared to kiss him, to tease him, to talk with him as if he remembers all of their life together. Some of that life is returning to him, prompted by dream and touch, although the things he remembers are often out of context, separate scenes unattached to the chain of the narrative.

His memory returns in fits and starts, and there is no order to what he remembers or when. A tall young woman passing through the club car on the arm of a middle-aged gentleman brings to Jared's mind the recollection of his younger sister, but watching Jensen shave in the tiny mirror over the washbasin in their compartment, an act Jensen claims Jared has seen a hundred times, brings no spark of familiarity. He remembers his parents, his grandfather's ranch in Texas, yet he cannot remember the brother that Jensen insists was born first and grew taller – Jensen claims to have met the man and can speak from experience as to how alike he and Jared are – or half his childhood or most of his schooling. He remembers Chau and Mr Sheppard and Miss Harris and, eventually, Kane and Morgan, but not Collins, not Hodge. He remembers a blonde girl wearing a leather apron over a tweed suit, goggles around her neck, demonstrating the electrical properties of a thin coil of wire, and he knows she supplied his laboratory with parts for his machines, wires and switches and other things to make a spark. Her name was Miss Tal she worked with her father, who Jared never met. He remembers Mrs Smith, his landlady, also blonde, but older, more sedate, bringing a late supper up to his rooms because he was too absorbed sketching out a sudden idea to come down to the dining room with the rest of the boarders.

And he remembers Jensen, more and more, these scenes eventually stitching themselves into enough of a quilt to cover him in the memory of a life he had with a man he loved.

They change rail lines in Chicago, with enough time to eat and stretch their legs and buy Jared some new clothes, but not enough for them to find a good hotel, a quiet place for them to kiss and touch, to make each other beg and moan and sigh. For all that Jared is beginning to remember New York, it is still not entirely real to him, and so Chicago feels like the largest, loudest, busiest city he has ever seen. As they walk out of Marshall Field & Co a bright red fire engine rattles past them trailing clouds of steam, one of the firemen ringing the bell wildly to make carts and carriages and people move out of the way. They watch a dark-skinned gentleman in a tailcoat disembark from a steam-driven carriage, holding out his hand for an equally dark-skinned lady as she too emerges into the light.

“We never came here, did we?” Jared asks Jensen, as the couple strolls inside a restaurant.

“Chicago?” Jensen asks. “No. What do you think about it?”

“I wish the elevator operator in that store knew more about how the elevators worked.” Jared peppered the poor man in Marshall Field with questions about the steam-driven elevators. He realizes now he must have ridden them in New York, and at one time he himself might have known about their inner workings.

The train from Chicago to New York is not much different from the train between Padua and Chicago, and their travels continue in the same vein – the days filled with talking and sketching, the nights heavy and intimate.

“I remembered that you like this,” Jared murmurs, fingertips tickling the inside of Jensen's thigh as he kneels on the floor of their train compartment, Jensen's legs spread, his breathing harsh. Jensen's cock is heavy and full, thanks to Jared's mouth, but Jared cannot resist flicking his tongue at the head, just to hear Jensen moan.

“I hate you,” Jensen manages, and Jared laughs. He remembers that too.

And he remembers that he likes the way Jensen's teeth close around his nipple, the way Jensen's hand closes around his cock, the way Jensen's tongue takes possession of his mouth if Jared gives him even the barest opening.

He remembers a lot of things.

By the time they arrive in New York his brain has managed to repopulate enough of the empty plain of his lost memory, and the city that greets him and Jensen is almost as familiar as he could have hoped. He knows the tall buildings and the bustling crowds and the noise and the windows and the carriages. He knows the men and women selling their wares from carts, and he knows the sidewalk displays in front of the grocers' windows, and he knows the drivers whipping their horses through the crowds. He knows the theaters and restaurants and shops, the signs for lawyers and tailors and goods and services of all kinds. He knows the smells and the sky and the crush, the gray stone and the red brick and the painted wood and the many panes of glass.

He knew this place. He loved this place. He knew where he belonged, when he was here.

He knows it now.

He has not felt so much at home, not anywhere in the past year. As content as he was in Padua – and he really was content – sometimes he knew, in a way he could never articulate, that there was another town where he fit just as well.

“You'll have to stay with me,” Jensen says as he waves down a cab outside the train station. He is carrying his saddlebags, Jared the carpetbag. Jensen arranged for the vapor-velo – Jared will have to refer to it that way now, even though he does not remember naming it - to be delivered to the guard house. “Mrs Smith rented your rooms a long time ago, and I don't trust Pellegrino won't come after you.”

“I still don't know what he wants from me,” Jared says.

“We'll talk to Chau. He's the only one who's still around who worked with you.” Jensen glances sideways at Jared. “Is this familiar? How much do you remember now?”

“A lot.”

Pieces slide into place as the cab carries them to their destination, gears start to turn, plates slot together. The engine of Jared's brain rumbles to life, pistons pumping as the boiler hisses steam. It is a lot. It is everything.

But his head is starting to hurt when they finally arrive at a tall building made of large blocks of pale gray stone, the wide steps leading up to heavy steel doors flanked by elaborate wrought-iron lamps painted black and gold. It is an imposing edifice, elegant and expensive, whispers of innovation and engineering and money drifting through its cool marble halls.

Jared does not pester the elevator operator this time. The elevator cage is polished brass, the bench seat upholstered with tufted red velvet. Jared knows this is Mr Sheppard's private elevator, leading straight up to his office on the top floor, where he can look out at the city he believes he will someday own. He can see Jared's laboratory from here, its high ceilings and tall windows letting in the light by which Jared sketched and experimented and noted mistakes and successes, where he designed and built things including the mystery that nearly got him killed, the mystery that took his memory and sent him halfway across the country with no recollection of who he was. The mystery that took him from New York, from Jensen.

“Mr Padalecki, it's so good to see you again,” Mr Sheppard says, after they have been ushered into his inner sanctum, a room of heavy furniture made of leather and dark wood, curtains pulled aside to let in light, the noise from the city streets a murmur at this height. Mr Sheppard comes forward, clasps Jared's forearm with one hand and claps him on the shoulder with the other. “I'm glad you're in one piece. I assume Mr Ackles took care of you.”

Under any other circumstance Jared might snicker, for Jensen did indeed take very good care of him, in a manner of speaking. But this is a serious room, and right now Mr Sheppard is a serious man, and Jared would not get Jensen in trouble.

“He did,” he says. “He saved my life twice.”

“As he said.” Now Mr Sheppard lets go of Jared to shake Jensen's hand. “You've done well,” he says. “Did you find it?”

“No, sir,” Jensen says. He is standing ramrod straight, like a soldier, like an enlisted man making his report to a senior officer. Jared does not remember this about Jensen, if he ever served in the army, if he was ever trained to that obedience.

“I don't remember,” Jared adds. “I don't know what I was building. I don't know why anyone would want to kill me. I don't remember what happened.”

“Come, sit,” Mr Sheppard says, ushering them further into his office and directing them to a leather sofa. He pours them each a shot of something dark – whiskey? bourbon? - from a cut-glass decanter, pours some for himself, and leans against his heavy wood desk as he sips. He looks at Jared. “I received a telegram that Mr Ackles had found you, and another that you'd lost your memory but were otherwise intact. Tell me where you were and what you do remember.”

So Jared tells him about Padua, about Genevieve and the bar, about the various things he invented and sketched in the past year, about being attacked in his bed in the middle of the night, about Jensen rescuing him, about the men giving chase as he and Jensen left Padua on Jensen's vapor-velo, the motorized bicycle Jared built for him.

“Jensen told me there was an explosion in the lab,” he finishes, “but I don't remember it at all. I didn't have anything with me when I got to Padua, so whatever I was working on must have blown up.”

“I've asked Mr Chau to join us – I told him Mr Ackles found you – he might be able to shed some light on the matter.” Mr Sheppard glances at the elaborate clock on a shelf. “He should be here soon.”

“I remember him. Was I working with anyone else?”

“No.”

“Not that we knew,” Jensen adds. “It was just the two of you. I'm surprised Pellegrino didn't go after Chau too.”

As if mentioning him as conjured him, there is a knock on the door and at Mr Sheppard's “Enter!” Miss Harris ushers Chau inside. He is exactly as Jared remembers, and because they were friends and colleagues, Jared stands to say hello.

“Jared!” Chau cries. “You're alive!” He launches himself across the room. He is half a foot shorter than Jared, yet Jared is nearly bowled over.

Osric, Jared's brain supplies. This exuberant young man has another name.

“What happened?” Mr Chau – Osric – demands. “Where were you? How'd Mr Ackles find you?”

“I don't know,” Jared says, “Wyoming, and good sleuthing.”

“Wyoming!”

“Did you bring them?” Mr Sheppard asks. Osric recovers himself, produces a notebook from an inner pocket of his coat, and hands it to Mr Sheppard. The cover is cardboard, the pages bulging. Jared does not recognize it as his, but he knows – it contains his notes, his experiments, his sketches, all his attempts to build the thing that nearly caused his death. This is what Pellegrino wants, this well-used collection of pages, this glimpse into the workings of Jared's inventive mind.

Mr Sheppard hands Jared the notebook. He looks expectant. Jensen looks expectant. Osric looks excited. Jared flips through it, reading handwriting that is recognizably his, numbers and lists and diagrams, crossed-out ideas and half-formed thoughts. His brain tries to make sense of it, but in the way it would try to make sense of a telegram with every fourth letter missing, or a page of newsprint smudged from the rain. He is reading another man's ideas detailed in his own hand.

He understands, but at the same time this is all strange to him. Alien.

He cannot meet Jensen's eyes, cannot let on that these pages, these important pieces of information, conduct nothing through his brain. They do not flip the switch that Jensen and Osric and Mr Sheppard so clearly expected. They bring nothing to life.

“There's more,” Osric says. “Working drawings and mechanical diagrams, but I didn't want to bring them.” His voice drops. “Everyone thought they were lost. They weren't.”

“Mr Chau,” Mr Sheppard says. “Have you been lying to me all this time?”

“Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I was, I was scared.”

“What did you do?” Jensen asks, his voice neutral but his expression commanding.

Osric looks down at the floor, at the thick carpet, at his shoes, and his words come out in a rush. “We were working off copies of the drawings so when the lab exploded the copies burned but the originals were safe I hid them because they were important and I didn't want anyone to know because I didn't want to get killed and besides Jared knew things I didn't and I couldn't finish the project without him I'm so sorry I lied to you but I didn't think the explosion was an accident and it was just luck that I wasn't there and I don't want to die.” He takes a breath, looks up at Jared. “I'm sorry.”

“What were we building?” Jared asks. The one thing he cannot remember. The most important thing.

“A self-propelling engine. It generates its own energy. It doesn't run on gasoline, or steam, or electricity. It doesn't need to be wound again once you start it. The only prototype we had was destroyed in the explosion, so all that's left is the drawings and your notes.” He gestures to the notebook in Jared's hands. “Even that's not everything. You kept some of it in your head.”

Jared knows he will never get that back. He will never know what he was doing when his laboratory went up around him. He will never retrieve what he did not commit to paper. That part of his brain is a dead battery that no shock, no spark, will bring back to life.

But he also knows he can recreate what he cannot recall. He was prepared to do it with Jensen – to build their life again, from scratch, had he not been able to remember it – and he knows, deep in his soul, that he is a smart enough man, a skilled enough engineer, that he can rebuild this mysterious engine. It will take time, but it can be done.

“You're going to make me a lot of money,” Mr Sheppard muses. “Why did you never share your progress with me? Why the secrecy?”

“Imagine if every engine could run on its own,” Jared says. He does not remember inventing it, but the concept is one he understands. “The money and effort that would save, in everything you built. Imagine airships that can cross the ocean without needing giant boilers to generate all that steam. You wouldn't need a coal car on every train. It's so valuable it almost got me killed, because someone thought I'd uncovered that secret.”

“It could still get you killed,” Jensen points out. He nods at Osric. “You too. Let me talk to Pellegrino,” he says to Mr Sheppard. Mr Sheppard purses his lips, then nods.

“Bring Mr Kane and Mr Collins with you,” he says. “Take Mr Padalecki back to the guard house first. You stay here,” he tells Osric. “We are going to have a conversation.”

Jared is not sorry he and Jensen have been so summarily dismissed.

Miss Harris calls up Mr Sheppard's personal driver to take them to the guard house, where Jared and his notebook will be safe. Despite the knowledge that he can somehow rebuild, Jared is disappointed that he will never remember the exact things Osric said he kept in his head, the things that will no doubt make his perpetual-motion machine a success without the further trial and error that is necessary now. He knows there are other memories that will be forever frozen in his brain, things that no sight, no touch, will ever coax into life. Those gears will never turn. Nothing will illuminate those corners.

He tries to tell Jensen as much, as an apology for the torture Jensen put himself through over the past year, but Jensen waves him off.

“Chau gave you your notes back,” he says. “He kept your drawings. You're a smart guy – you'll figure it out. Besides” - he leans close, his breath warm on Jared's ear - “you remembered me.”

“Yeah, but - “

“No 'but'.” Jensen leans back. “You didn't know who you were in Padua, and you were still inventing things. Your brain's been working this whole time. Now it just has something real to work on. But don't forget – you said you'd fix my vapor-velo's headlamp.” He grins, and Jared has to laugh.

This is what he was missing. Not just Jensen, but this city, his work, his colleagues. The engine of his brain is churning along, steam hissing through the pipes and the pistons pumping and the gears turning easily. There are dead spots, he knows, cold metal, stuck levers. But what he cannot work with, he can work around. He has been doing just that all year, all the time he was in Wyoming, the weeks and months he did not know who he was or where he came from or what he used to be.

Jensen's touch started to bring his memory back. His work, his laboratory, will get him the rest of the way. He cannot wait to get back to it.


End file.
